Environment and Society 2nd Half

As I predicted, this half was much better than the first one. Specifics are much more interesting to me than general approaches. My favorite chapters were Lawns, French Fries, and Wolves. And in general, I liked the history sections because they are the least known parts of these environmental problems. If people saw how superficial and culturally developed some of this stuff is they might stop seeing lawns and such as a necessity.

Actually, I’ve seen the spread of information being a big problem that occurs over and over again with these environmental problem. While, we may be vaguely aware of some of these things, people don’t always know ways to help or have the information re-enforced a lot. Since most issues need global education and people won’t be exposed to topic if they aren’t involved or interested already, it seems a very challenging task. Popular science books like Eating Animals are probably more widely read than a textbook like this, but even then books don’t help that much. The internet seem promising but there is so much information there and then American or English only information is also a problem. But I think that the internet has more capacity to help spread information if someone puts their mind to it. I think now more than ever people have the tools necessary to spread the information, but we don’t know how to do it effectively. Some people are trying though.

The educational tool I immediately thought of in the Wolf chapter is one of way we could spread information. It’s a video game that trended a few years ago called “Wolf Quest,” an educational game made for the Minnesota zoo to educate people on wolves. It’s really fun and does teach you things. I may have named all my wolves and pups after toothpaste brands and teeth, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t take it seriously. I still remember a lot. even though I was mostly about the glitchy bear and my idiot mate that wanted to drowned our pups.

So, as suggested, I decided to look into another item similar to the one in the book, so I looked up jeans. I figured there would be a lot of information and I was not disappointed. One report had the history:

Denim cloth itself has an unusual history. The name comes from serge de Nimes, or the serge of Nimes, France. Originally, it was strong material made from wool. By the 1700s, it was made from wool and cotton. . . it was used to make sails, but eventually, some innovative Genovese sailors thought it fit that such fine, strong material would make great pants, or “genes.” . . . Denim was treated with a blue dye obtained from the indigo plant. . . Blue jeans in the form we know them today didn’t come about until the middle of the nineteenth century. Levi Strauss, an enterprising immigrant . . .He first designed and marketed “Levi’s” in 1850, . . . .Original Levi’s did not contain rivets. A tailor by the name of Jacob Davis invented riveted pants at the request of a miner who complained that regular pants were not rugged enough to hold his mining tools. Davis subsequently granted Strauss the use of his rivet idea, which was patented on May 20, 1873. . . Zipper s replaced button flies in 1920 . . . and in 1937 the rivets on the back pockets were moved inside in response to complaints from school boards that the jeans students wore were damaging chairs and from cowboys that their jeans were damaging their saddle s. In the 1960s, they were removed entirely from the back pockets. Blue jeans started becoming popular among young people in the 1950s. . . In the United States, 200 million pairs of jeans were sold in 1967, 500 million in 1977, with a peak of 520 million in 1981.

And many other studies were easily found online about how to improve the impacts (which was mostly water wasted on washing) and surprising a lot were by Levi Strauss. And on their website you can look at their different jeans and it tell you exact numbers of water used, CO2 produced, sustainable fibers used, etc. I don’t know what powers their interest, but I can’t help thinking they thought green information would help with sales, and since most of the aid would have to do with reduced washing of the jeans, they wouldn’t have to spend anymore money. There is probably a lot of trading of resources that are economic and political that I don’t know about, and recycling jeans is apparently a thing. It is really interesting to think about items on a global environmental scale. Now I can see how much research is involved in their analysis, and I’ve just scratched the surface of jeans.

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